Anna Karenina eBook

“Well, in that, at least, you’re in agreement
with Spencer, whom you dislike so much. He says,
too, that education may be the consequence of greater
prosperity and comfort, of more frequent washing,
as he says, but not of being able to read and write...”

“Well, then, I’m very glad—­or
the contrary, very sorry, that I’m in agreement
with Spencer; only I’ve known it a long while.
Schools can do no good; what will do good is an economic
organization in which the people will become richer,
will have more leisure—­and then there will
be schools.”

“Still, all over Europe now schools are obligatory.”

“And how far do you agree with Spencer yourself
about it?” asked Levin.

But there was a gleam of alarm in Sviazhsky’s
eyes, and he said smiling:

“No; that screaming story is positively capital!
Did you really hear it yourself?”

Levin saw that he was not to discover the connection
between this man’s life and his thoughts.
Obviously he did not care in the least what his reasoning
led him to; all he wanted was the process of reasoning.
And he did not like it when the process of reasoning
brought him into a blind alley. That was the
only thing he disliked, and avoided by changing the
conversation to something agreeable and amusing.

All the impressions of the day, beginning with the
impression made by the old peasant, which served,
as it were, as the fundamental basis of all the conceptions
and ideas of the day, threw Levin into violent excitement.
This dear good Sviazhsky, keeping a stock of ideas
simply for social purposes, and obviously having some
other principles hidden from Levin, while with the
crowd, whose name is legion, he guided public opinion
by ideas he did not share; that irascible country
gentleman, perfectly correct in the conclusions that
he had been worried into by life, but wrong in his
exasperation against a whole class, and that the best
class in Russia; his own dissatisfaction with the
work he had been doing, and the vague hope of finding
a remedy for all this—­all was blended in
a sense of inward turmoil, and anticipation of some
solution near at hand.

Left alone in the room assigned him, lying on a spring
mattress that yielded unexpectedly at every movement
of his arm or his leg, Levin did not fall asleep for
a long while. Not one conversation with Sviazhsky,
though he had said a great deal that was clever, had
interested Levin; but the conclusions of the irascible
landowner required consideration. Levin could
not help recalling every word he had said, and in
imagination amending his own replies.